[scottyfox]

I've been trying to wrap my head around how the CF Leadership Institute can be of assistance to this thread and here are some thoughts.

Flexibility of command structure: I think that the only thing that games will have in common will be that there is a person or persons in command. Leadership must be adaptive to the team (direct vs indirect) and to circumstances.

Simplicity: Milsim is just that, simulation, and as a result, there is no way in hell that participants will have the training, education and professional development that is found in soldiers, sailors and airmen and women. There's no place in airsoft for the full Operational Planning Process, nor joint targeting and so on. Accordingly, it is a grave mistake to overthink planning and execution.

Situating yourself: Airsoft is played at the tactical level, with some improvisation and assumption on the operational and strategic level. Since there is no joint staff, no J2 Int or J5 Plans, most of the higher stuff is played out by the game admin (Kokanee and Brian come to mind as excellent examples of this). As a result, it is the role of the tactical commander (likely Capt) to organize his or her company to directly effect the fire and movement necessary to acheive his or her operational commander's (LCol, HQ not participating) aims of mass and maneuvre (the operational level).
In short, you dictate the fire and movement only, the rest is out of your control.

With that in mind, the Company commander, his senior NCM, and his platoon commanders (Lt) with their own senior NCM, divided up into sections/squads whatever (some Recce/ Sniper dets in there too). To keep things lean, the senior NCMs could act as right hand men and I don't see much use in DCOs, nor do I see much value in having Int O, or Sig Ops in airsoft. While I'm also not a huge fan of the separate radio guy in airsoft at the company command level, but I'm sure whoever does it has their reasons.

Problem: That's alot of leaders. But the placement of the staff is very important. An institutional leader (the Coy OC) should select his small team leaders based on their ability to follow orders and their soldiering skills (orienteering, communications etc) while Platoon commanders and the Coy OC himself, should focus on their ability to implement the commander's guidance through effective interpersonal skills and team management. As far as arriving at that plan, organizational flexibility: maybe Coy OC gets together a fake Operational level staff with a J2 and a J5 and does the stuff that I outlined in "Operational Planning and you..."

In a perfect world:
Squad leader...................Platoon Leader................................Company OC
Linear thinking -----------------------------> Creative thinking, agility, adaptability
Soldiering ----------------------------------> Organization, people skills, inspiration etc